Welcome Back
by Kyravalon
Summary: Takes place after 3x11. Our characters are back to Storybrooke… I plan on going all Rumbelle crazy later on (possibly with a rating upgrade!).


**Takes place after 3x11. Our characters are back to Storybrooke****… I plan on going all Rumbelle crazy later on (possibly with a rating upgrade!).**

**Disclaimer: I don't own them, etc. Except for the Countess, who's obviously not an OUAT character (for now, at least).**

* * *

She woke up harshly; breathing heavily and with the certainty that something was terribly wrong. She pulled her hands forward and started moving them around, feeling the covers and the wall behind for balance. But she could not still make where she was. Her mind raced in fear and confusion as her eyes started focusing the details before her. Recognition came to her. This was here bedroom; that much was clear. After all, she had been sleeping in the same place for more than 30 years. She felt the watery texture of her nightgown, ran her hands through her hair. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Except that, for some reason, it seemed as it was not. And the sense of anguish lingered... Her thought went straight to the place where it always did, last thing before the sleep took her over and first thing after waking up (sometimes she even wandered there in dreams, too). That place where there was only room for one person. And suddenly she realized that the last thing she could remember was her son going away from town, knowing that he had already forgotten all about her; watching him as he headed for a new life, safe and happy, but utterly and forever unattainable.

* * *

Obviously something had gone different than expected. Otherwise by now she would certainly not be driving a car and definitely not driving it through the streets of a town that was not supposed to even exist. She had messed things up before. But she could not picture how this could have anything to do with her, when all she had done was to reverse a curse (and to pay an incredibly high prize for it). To her eyes, that left but a single explanation.

"That creepy imp and his twisted words!"

She was half her way to the pawnshop when it finally struck her.

The weird sensation of being paralyzed, forced to hear. Forced to see. How that despicable creature had threatened them all. How he had looked so confident, and stubborn, and yes, excited like a child on his birthday party. How he had lost his grin and any other physical trait that made him look like a 13 year old. How he had tried, miserably, to play the card of the loving father and stop his son from slicing the dagger through both their bodies, unsuccessfully, because, you know, villains do not get happy endings. How the girl had collapsed and

"He's gone."

Gone. Vanished. No more Dark One.

Whatever the crooked goblin had meant when he explained her how to escape Pan's curse was gone with him. Unless he had shared some insight with the girl, of course.

She turned the wheel of the car that she was not supposed to be driving and then headed to the town square that she should not be expecting to see anymore.

By the time she got off the car a small crowd was coming towards her, that witty old innkeeper ahead of it, whit her granddaughter at her heels and neither of them looking very friendly.

"All right, _Your Majesty_. What have you done this time?"

There was no respect for royalty anymore.

* * *

The castle was dark and silent and so, so cold. With all her power and her spells and all the fireplaces everywhere, nothing battled the chill better than a nice gas heating system. She wondered whether any heating system could ever fight the cold she felt inside, though. As far as she could remember, she had always loved. Intensely, passionately. And love had often hurt. Very deeply. But nothing could compare to the love and the pain she felt now. And she had so much space in heart to fill with these. Because, for once, she was not driven by rage. She did not have a purpose apart from lingering, each day a little sadder, a little number, a little colder.

Loneliness had never been an issue before Storybrooke. And, as much as she missed Henry, neither was it now. She did not long for company anymore. She did not long for anything.

"Agrabah" she called.

The surface of the mirror tilted slightly as the face of the Jinni began to be drawn upon it.

"Your Highness". As if they had got back in time. As if he had never left the glass.

Regina looked silently to him, into him, her hands raised at her sides. Suddenly, Agrabah's face was no longer framed by the golden ornament that held the mirror but on top of a man's body. The Jinni stared at his own hands, while they reached to feel his face, his chest, his legs...

"You freed me", he mouthed.

"It seemed to me that you had got too used to inhabit a whole body" she replied. "Now go".

"Am I truly free?" He asked. "To act as I please? To go where I want to?"

Regina nodded absentmindedly.

"Then it is my wish to remain in the fortress, at your service" he said fervently.

"Do as you please". She turned her back to him and headed of the balcony. She perched there, surrounded by the night, and summoned her power.

She was so cold. But still she felt her heart beat, and she had made up her mind. She would endure. She would live, as if only to feel that love through that pain. As if only to be there... just in case...

The black stone of the fortress shone wildly while it swallowed all the mist emanating from the protection and concealment spells. The moon above was clouded and the wind kept whirling.

* * *

"Get off my way, you useless lot", she hissed. The crowd stepped back, as a voice raised from behind her.

"Regina! What's going on?"

And now my day is complete, she thought, eyeing the two idiots while they hurried to reach her side, the saintly-like-know-it-all-damn-her Snow White walking rather clumsily... and oversized.

"Oh, girl. I think the appropriate question is what happened to _you_".

There was a loud gasp surrounded by murmurings as the townsfolk present noticed Snow's grown belly. The girl in question looked as shocked as anybody.

"How should I know? One moment I'm standing at the town line, watching half of my family drive away and preparing myself for dimension-jumping back home, and the next one I'm waking up at bed, huge and heavy and nowhere near the Black Forest."

"Is that a child inside you, sister?" the bad-tempered dwarf said; his mouth resting wide open, matching with his eyes.

"Well, it certainly kicks as one!" The other idiot placed his hand on his wife's belly, as to stress his point.

"Snow!" that was the werewolf girl balancing in her heels. "You cannot possibly have grown a child overnight!" And stating the obvious.

"Has anybody checked the date?"

At last some common sense. Everybody stared at Granny as she headed to dinner. They followed her and watched her turning on the TV and zapping until she found a channel that was broadcasting the news. All of them hold their breath for a while.

"Was it not April?" somebody asked.

"Was it not _year_ _2012_?!" she heard a frustrated Dr. Whale replying.

"Very well, everybody" the old woman turned to face them, as if running the business made her the one officially in charge, somehow. "It looks like we lost nearly 14 months."

Regina made her way through the door before anybody could notice her leaving. She wanted to talk to the girl right away.

After banging the door of her apartment for a few minutes and not getting any answer, Regina tried in the library. The door was not locked, so she pulled it and stepped inside. She founded her sitting in a dark corner, hair undone and messy clothes, with her hands on her lap and staring to the void. Pretty as ever.

"Belle, I need to talk to you." Her own voice sounded a little too harsh, even to herself.

"We did not make it to the Black Forest" the girl said, but did not move or change the direction of her gaze.

"So it seems. Either that or we were there and we came back somehow. In any case, we have a yearlong gap in our memories."

Belle nodded slowly, looking at her for a short moment and then turning her eyes away, as she could not care less.

"Do you know what happened?" Regina pushed, starting to feel irritated.

"Me? Why? It was you who did the curse. And the one reversing it."

"It was Rumplestiltskin who told me so. Both times."

"He's gone", Belle replied, her voice so low that Regina could hardly hear it. That made her soften her tone.

"I know. But I was wondering whether he told you something that I missed about the effects of the reversal."

"He told me nothing about that. We never got the chance to speak about so many things..." She took her hands to her mouth, as if realizing something. "And now we'll never get to." Tears rolled down her face, but she kept still and silent.

Somebody came through the door and went straight to Belle. The werewolf kneeled before the girl and put her arms around her. Belle did not shift her eyes from that point in the void nor did she stop crying.

* * *

The mirrors were shouting her name in a deafening way.

She made her way back from the gardens and placed herself in front of the full sized glass that hanged on the wall beside the entrance. A figure was there motioning roughly and speaking unintelligibly. She blinked at the sight of it. That just could not be happening: Rumplestiltskin was yelling at her from the depths of her mirror.

"What is this trickery?" she whispered.

The figure that could not possibly be Rumplestiltskin seemed to have noticed her presence and fixed eyes on her, resuming his cries.

"Regina, listen to me! I have no time to explain, but you need to come. I… I am at Snow White's former castle, in the alchemy tower. You need to come and take her away. Take her away from me. NOW!"

The unnatural pupils, the greenish skin, the rotten teeth… everything fitted perfectly with the memory she guarded from the Dark One.

"You sound pretty altered for a dead imp" she narrowed her eyes and tried to pierce whatever veil was creating that illusion.

"REGINA! No!" His voice cracked and his eyes filled with tears. "Please… Please, just… just come and take her with you."

Suddenly another figure appeared beside him. Regina recognized her, even with her sulked face and the dirty hair and the ragged clothes. After all, the girl had born that very same aspect for the 30 years she had been her prisoner.

"Regina, don't!" She was placing a hand on the other figure's arm, making him look back at her in horror.

"Belle, what are you saying?!" He took the girl's shoulders and pushed her back as he addressed Regina once more.

"You need to come and take Belle from here. I'm pleading you".

"Regina, listen" the girl's voice rose behind. "It's you who she's after and she cannot have you. If she does she'll get to Henry!" Don't come; don't even leave your fortr..."

The sounds disappeared as the mirror glass shifted from showing the two struggling figures to return her own face and body perched forward. She ran towards the nearest mirror, but it was also just her looking back. She frowned and walked the long corridor massaging her temples. What had she just seen? It _had_ to be a trick: she had witnessed the Dark One impale himself with his own dagger.

But a trick to do what? She had heard two different people (or illusions, more likely) giving her opposite indications. She tried to reestablish the communication, doing what felt like the stupidest thing ever.

"Rumplestiltskin, I summon thee."

Nothing happened. Of course, that was what you usually got when you summoned the dead, she thought.

She reasoned that the sensible thing to do was to forget everything about that crazy calling from The Other Side; that the safest thing was undoubtedly to remain where she was. Then again, magic burned in her fingertips, wasted, and blood run through her body demanding something, anything. And the girl had pronounced her son's name.

Henry.

"I will go."

Regina gasped at the unexpected presence. She had seen no sign of the Jinni since she freed him and was not even sure that he had remained at the castle, as he had said.

"I'll take the girl, and then you'll be able to talk to her."

* * *

Regina wandered aimlessly trying to make up her mind. She should have been happy to be there, in a world that she shared with Henry. But she had the overwhelming sensation that whatever had happened in the past months meant nothing but trouble.

She stopped by the boundary of the forest that surrounded the town, the sight of it blurry under the effect of the thick fog that was spreading all over the place. There was something painful in the way the sunlight penetrated the mist and shone through it. Regina braced herself as a sudden chill went through her body. A muffled sound behind her made her turn around. Along the road that came from the bridge, a ghostly apparition swayed.

I was a pale young woman, with long hear falling over her shoulders and dressed in a white nightgown that floated around her bare feet. When she saw Regina, she came to a halt and made a gracious curtsey.

"Do I know you?" Regina asked, catching her breath.

"You know me" the woman answered, rolling the words with an accent as thick as honey. "I am the Countess."

But of course she was.

"What is this place? How did we arrive here?" She was not looking directly at Regina, but at her own hands, that she wove loosely in the air.

"You were not here before. You never made it here when I cursed our land 30 years ago" Regina said, more to herself than to answer the other woman's questions. And then: "What were you doing before… before waking up here?"

"I was feasting in my castle", the Countess replied, her lips parted and her eyes unshakeable. "But I am not hungry anymore." She resumed the contemplation of her hands and her arms dancing in the mist. "Your Highness, are you aware that there is no magic here?"

She closed the door of her home and leaned against it. No magic. No magic indeed. She was back to being powerless, with the aggravating factor that now everybody had their memories from their past lives intact (yearlong gap left aside) and that there was no Rumplestiltskin around to bring magic back.

She went to her bedroom and took her cell phone from the nightstand. She turned it on and waited until the directory was ready to search through it. She tapped letter E and went straight to the register see was looking for. Before she could command the call, the cell started beeping notifying the arrival of messages. It carried on until the envelope icon in the upper left corner flickered, indicating that the memory was full. She opened the incoming folder and her heart started bumping angrily. All the messages bore the same sentence, again and again and again.

DON'T LOOK FOR HENRY!

* * *

**My apologies. English is not my first language. I tried my best, so I hope you enjoy it (or, at least, that your eyes don't bleed). Reviews are more than welcomed!**


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